Martin W. Gary

Martin Witherspoon Gary (25 March 1831-9 April 1881) was a Brigadier-General in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War and a Democratic state representative and state senator from South Carolina.

Biography
Martin Witherspoon Gary was born in Cokesbury, South Carolina in 1831, and he became a lawyer in Edgefield in 1855. He was elected to the State House in 1860 as a secessionist, and, when the state seceded at the year's end, he joined Wade Hampton III's cavalry legion as a captain of infantry. He led the legion at the First Battle of Bull Run after all of its other officers were disabled, and he became a Colonel in 1862 and a Brigadier-General in 1863. Gary led a cavalry brigade in the Army of Northern Virginia, and, when Richmond fell in April 1865, he was ordered to destroy Mayo's Bridge; he notably told his men, "All over, goodbye; blow her to hell." He then escorted Jefferson Davis and his cabinet to his family's home in Cokesbury, where they ended the war. After the war, he became an outspoken racist who was opposed to the African-American majority gaining representation in state politics, and he worked with right-wing paramilitaries and rifle clubs to suppress black voting rights in the state. He also convinced Hampton to run for Governor, and he suppressed black voting in Aiken and Edgefield Counties through bribery and intimidation. He was then elected to the State Senate in 1876, and he became an enemy of Hampton after Hampton blocked his appointment to the US Senate in 1877 and 1879. Gary left the State Senate in 1881 and returned home, dying that same year.